Chapter 66 Asha
ASHA
Velvet and Vine pulsed with life. Daisy told a story about some big-shot hockey player she’d banged after a wedding she’d coordinated, and Beth mentioned something about an intern who’d gotten covered in diarrhea during the extraction of a lost sex toy.
Apparently, IBS and certain bedroom activities didn’t go so great together.
I smiled when I was supposed to and nodded at the right moments, but it felt like watching a movie with the sound turned down. Everyone moved around me while I sat hollow in the center of it all.
After an hour, I’d had enough. I hugged the girls, told them I was tired, and slipped into an Uber.
The ride home blurred past. My chest ached the whole way. Going out hadn’t distracted me from my pain at all.
God, would this ever end?
I passed Rita, carrying a camo duffel bag slung over one shoulder, on the stairs.
“Rita.” I nodded.
“Red,” she replied, and whistled a jaunty tune.
She seemed happy. Probably off to make a gym full of grown men cry.
I unlocked my door, flicked on the light—
And froze.
Rook stood in the middle of my living room.
My purse slipped from my fingers and hit the floor with a dull thud. My hands shot up to cover my eyes because clearly I was drunk and hallucinating.
I counted to three, then dragged my palms away.
He was still there.
Tired. Weather-beaten. His beard rougher, his shoulders heavier.
Dark jeans, Henley, long coat with its collar raised.
He looked like hell, yet better than anything I’d ever seen. Because it was him.
Here. In my apartment.
“Hello, Wildfire.”
The sound of his voice splintered something inside me. My knees wobbled. The room tilted. Before I could collapse, Rook surged forward and caught me. His strong arms banded around my body as though they’d never let me go.
His chest was solid beneath my cheek, his heartbeat pounding as frantically as mine. I clutched at his jacket and breathed him in. Salt and rain. Soap and smoke.
Rook…but different.
Like he’d rushed from wherever he’d been and some of its smell still clung to him.
For one impossible moment, I let myself drown in it. The warmth, the safety, the rightness of him holding me again. Months of loneliness spilled out in a rush of tears I couldn’t stop.
My fingers tightened in the fabric. I was afraid that if I let go, he’d vanish. “You’re really here.”
“I am.” His lips brushed my brow. “And I won’t leave you again.”
I leaned back just enough to see his face. “You’re serious?”
“Aye.” He seemed to have aged a few years in the months he’d been away, but those blue eyes burned with the same intensity that had hooked me from the start. “I’m so sorry, love. I never meant to hurt you.”
But he had hurt me. More than I’d ever been hurt before. More than I could put into words, but I’d try.
My tears dried up. Relief subsided, and something hostile replaced it. I shoved at his chest, hard enough to catch him off guard and make him stumble back a step.
“Sorry?” I growled. “You disappear for months, leave me with annulment papers and a fucking bank balance like it’s supposed to make up for abandoning me, and now you waltz in here with Sorry?”
Rook’s face twisted, but I didn’t stop.
“Do you have any idea what you did to me?” I narrowed my gaze.
“I wasn’t sure if you were dead. I didn’t know if you were fucking a different woman each night to erase me from your memory.
Every day I woke up was another round of not knowing, of wishing, of hoping, only to do it all again the next day. ”
His throat worked, but I cut him off, my words tumbling out jagged and furious. “You broke me, Rook. You shredded my heart, and then you expected me to just…get over it? Move on like I hadn’t lost the only man I’ve ever—” My voice caved, but I forced it out. “The only man I’ve ever really loved.”
Silence settled between us. My chest heaved. My hands shook so hard I had to curl them into fists.
Rook didn’t reach for me. He stood there, taking the full weight of my fury.
“You decided on our future without talking to me, and that was a shitty thing to do, Rook O’Connell.”
His jaw clenched, the muscle ticcing hard. Then his shoulders dropped.
“You’re right.” His eyes turned red and glassy.
“And I’ll hate myself for it until the day I die.
I thought I was protecting you. I told myself that if I disappeared, you’d be safe.
That you’d move on and forget about me. But I never stopped watching you, Asha.
I never stopped caring. I saw you fall apart piece by piece, and I thought it was temporary, that soon you’d let go.
But you didn’t. And Christ, neither did I. ”
He fell to his knees, held onto my thighs, and pressed his forehead to my belly. “I missed you so fucking much I thought I’d go mad.”
I rested my hands on his shoulders. “Rook—”
“No, let me finish.” He looked up at me, and his grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to hold me steady.
“I thought losing you on my own terms would be better than waiting for some enemy to try to take you from me. But I was wrong. So fucking wrong. Because being without you isn’t living. It’s bleeding out slowly.”
Rook’s words shook me down to my marrow. Tears pricked hot behind my lashes, but I blinked them away.
He reached into his coat pocket, and when his hand came out, he grasped a ring between his thumb and forefinger. The same one that had haunted my dreams. Giant emerald held up by two small red hands, surrounded by shimmering diamonds.
“I love you, Asha Sparks.” His blue eyes held mine. “Marry me again. Not forced. Not fake. Marry me for real this time, because I swear to God, I’ll never leave you again. Till death do us part, and not a day sooner.”
The emerald glinted up at me, mocking and mesmerizing all at once.
How I’d hated it at first. How I treasured it now.
I should’ve told him no. Should’ve told him he didn’t get to come back after months of silence and unravel me with a few endearing words.
I should’ve made him crawl farther, wait longer, beg harder.
Except I could see it, the truth etched into every tired line of his face. The anguish carved into his expression. The raw edge in his voice.
And God help me, I still loved him.
Even in the moments I’d hated him.
My knees gave out, and I sank down in front of him, our bodies so close I felt the tremor running through his chest. My fingers trembled as I cupped his face.
“You stupid, impossible man.” Tears burned my cheeks. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
The laugh that burst from him was half sob, half relief. He slipped the ring onto my finger, then crushed me to him. His mouth claimed mine in a kiss that was desperate and reverent all at once.
Rook stood and wrapped my legs around his waist without taking his lips from mine. The taste of him, the feel of him. I couldn’t get enough. His cock was a hard rod jutting against my core. I ground against him, eager to have nothing between us.
“Fuck,” he moaned against my mouth. “I’ve spent so many days and nights dreaming of you it’s hard to believe this is real.”
“Me too. I thought I was hallucinating when I walked through the door.”
“I’ve been such an eejit.”
“You have.”
“Never letting you go again.”
“Rook?”
“Aye, love?”
“Bedroom. Right now.”
He marched us down the hall, mouths fused, bodies pressed.
“I want kids. You?” he asked.
“Sure. How many?”
“Six.”
“Two.”
“Five.”
“Three, and that’s my final offer, gangster. I’m not driving them to school in a goddamn minivan.”
“Deal. I’m throwing your contraceptive pills away tomorrow.”
A sharp burst of laughter erupted from me. “Hard no. We’re having plenty of adult time before any demon spawn arrive.”
He grunted. “We’ll see about that.”
Rook tossed me on the unmade bed, and I bounced.
“Is this a bad time to tell you I haven’t washed the sheets in…actually, I can’t remember the last time I washed anything around here.”
“Don’t care.” He tore my shoes off and ripped my dress over my head. His own clothes came off a moment later.
“You’re lucky you didn’t show up a few hours earlier.”
Rook unclasped my bra and then tugged my panties down.
“I wasn’t smelling so fresh before I went out.”
“You could smell like a bear emerging from hibernation, and I’d still want you.” His gaze raked over my body, and he frowned. “You’ve lost too much weight. I’m going to feed you all your favorite foods until you beg me to stop.”
“That might be the hottest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He crawled over me and settled his big body between my thighs. God, I’d missed this. Missed him.
“Big wedding or small?” I asked.
“Anything you want.” He nuzzled my neck, nibbling and sucking his way to my earlobe.
“Since I wasn’t conscious for the first one, it’s gonna be big. Huge.” I dug my fingers into his hair. “I’ll have to talk to Daisy about planning it for us. She’s going to lose. Her. Shit.”
“Asha?” He drew back to look me in the eye. One tattooed hand clutched my thigh; the other braced beside my head.
“Yes?”
“Stop talking, love. I need to fuck you now.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He drove into me. Hard. Fast. Perfect.
A ragged cry escaped me, and Rook swallowed it with his mouth on mine. Every thrust was brutal and desperate, like he was stitching me together from the inside out. My nails raked down his skin, pulling him closer, deeper.
Then I held his face in my hands. “Say it again, Rook. No more going rogue. We’re in this together.”
“It’s you and me, Wildfire. Until whatever end we meet.”
His words settled in my chest and soothed my soul.
“Now it’s your turn.” He nipped at my lip. “Tell me what I want to hear.”
I smiled, knowing exactly what he meant. “I’m yours, Rook. Only yours. And you’re mine, forever. For real.”
This wasn’t just makeup sex. It was everything we’d lost and everything we’d fought for crashing together in a storm of heat and need.
And it wasn’t about possession or guilt or grief. It was unstoppable love. Raw and wild and terrifying.
Exactly as it should be.
The End